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Have you ever done anything JUST because you knew you would get away with it in

Yeah, foreigners can sometimes get away with stuff... above Chinese people. Especially in lower Tier cities because they are afraid of turning on the spotlight. I was on a business trip to Xi'an one trip and talking with a taxi driver...

He seemed extremely well educated for a taxi driver and we got along very well between our mix of Chinese and English. He was telling me how a few years ago the government pretty much demanded each taxi driver pay taxes and took all their cars (well allowed them to buy it themselves but it didn't make any sense). Anyway... to the point... we were swapping stories when I told him that one time about six of us foreigners rode around on motorcycles (none of us had a proper motorcycle license) and we stopped in front of a police station. We bought some beers and started drinking and a police officer came out... he looked us up and down and said, "Can I help you?"

We started talking to him in Chinese and he was very happy. "Are you riding these motorcycles?" he asked. "Yes, we are..." we replied, as we took another sip of the beer. His reaction... "Okay, just slow down a little (man yi dian)."

I felt a little guilty as it was obvious we abused some laws because we were foreigners... but we also take a lot of slack like people whispering, shouting "wai guo ren/lao wai" and sometimes we need to cut loose, right? I honesty think sometimes Chinese like it because it not only entertains them but shows them that you can show a little backbone and get away with it.

This is a great question. I usually try to follow the rules and keep my head down as much as I can. At the train station security I sometimes play a game where I try to walk right past the people with the metal detector wands without letting them frisk me. Now those people are completely useless anyway but they typically make a point of pretending to check everyone. I just walk right past them.

Now I have a couple of friends with much better stories:

Friend 1: He lived in a city with a river splitting it in half. There was a lot of rain over a period of time and the river started to flood. The school he worked at was closed for a few days due to the flooding. The problem: he lived on one side of the river while all of his friends lived on the other side. He didn't want to miss out on three days of drinking and fun during an unexpected vacation from work. So my friend starts to cross the bridge on foot but there is a police officer blocking anyone from crossing. My friend spoke enough Chinese to get the point but he feigned ignorance, waved at the police officer and spoke to him in simple English - basically the officer was frantically trying to make him turn around while my friend was smiling and saying "Hello, nice to meet you, I like China, you're my friend" or something like that. The officer had no clue how to deal with this situation as it was a tier 3 city with few foreigners. Eventually the officer gave up and my friend crossed the bridge.